Europa Universalis IV

Reviewing (mostly) every game (or DLC) in my library, part 168: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆☆ (8/10) [i]Europa Universalis IV[/i] is a grand strategy titan:a sprawling, complex simulation of early modern geopolitics where you can lead any country in the world from 1444 to 1821. From colonial empires to small tribal states, the game offers an enormous amount of freedom and flexibility. It's also one of the most daunting strategy games out there, with an intimidating interface and a towering learning curve. EU4 rewards persistence with satisfying political schemes, economic puzzles, and alternate histories—but it demands patience, and the DLC model leaves many players feeling nickel-and-dimed. [i]Europa Universalis IV[/i] is an acquired taste—but once it clicks, it can be one of the most rewarding games you’ll ever play. It’s not pretty, it’s not beginner friendly, and it requires some serious commitment. But if you’re willing to learn, experiment, and embrace the chaos of early modern politics, it delivers a power fantasy like no other. Just be ready for the long haul—and maybe a few browser tabs open on the side. 💰[b] Pros:[/b] [list] [*] Strategic depth that lasts for years. EU4 is both deep and complex. You don’t just declare war and march your troops. You think about coalition reactions, diplomatic relations, supply lines, battle tactics, terrain, manpower, and long-term consequences. You plan your tech advancement around institutions. You manipulate rivalries, exploit religion, and use subject nations to expand your influence without incurring aggressive expansion. It’s the kind of game you can sink 1,000 hours into and still find new layers of strategic interaction. [*] Incredible alternate history potential. This is where EU4 really shines: letting you rewrite the world. Will you restore the Roman Empire? Lead a Nahuatl Aztec crusade across Europe? Unite all of India under a Buddhist Raj? All of that is possible. Not through scripted storylines, but by using the game’s systemic mechanics to bend the map to your will. Watching strange outcomes organically emerge is part of the fun, and it gives every playthrough a sense of discovery. [*] Immersive country flavor and diversity. The amount of variation between nations is staggering. Muscovy plays like a militarized blizzard slowly expanding across Siberia. Venice focuses on trade and diplomacy. The Ottomans are a powerhouse with unique challenges tied to Janissaries and conversions. There’s a real effort to give each major power its own historical flavor, from national ideas to mission trees, unit models, and events. Some regions (like Europe or China) get more love than others, but even smaller nations can surprise you. [*] Rewarding long-term planning. EU4 is at its best when you’re three decades deep into a plan and it finally clicks. Like slowly vassalizing neighbors to avoid aggressive expansion penalties, marrying into a royal family to get a personal union, or stacking trade nodes to drain the New World into your treasury. The sense of payoff is massive—and because it’s not guaranteed (wars, disasters, or poor timing can ruin everything), it feels earned. [*] Modding and community support. This game has one of the most passionate and talented modding communities in grand strategy. From overhauls to quality-of-life improvements and fantasy total conversions, there’s a nearly endless array of content. Paradox has supported the game for over a decade, and the core systems still feel solid. [/list] 🖥️[b] Cons:[/b] [list] [*] Brutal onboarding for new players. Even by Paradox standards, EU4 is difficult to learn. The tutorial is barebones, and tooltips, while informative, are dense and overwhelming. Most players will need to consult YouTube guides, Wikis, or subreddit FAQs just to survive their first campaign. [*] Visually functional, not beautiful. Let’s be honest: the UI and map are outdated. EU4 looks like a 2013 spreadsheet. There’s no battle animation, no fancy zoom-ins, and no real-world visuals beyond the nation-colored map. Clicking on provinces opens menus packed with stats, numbers, and mini-icons. The font is small. The color scheme is dated. It works, but it’s not intuitive or modern by any means. [*] Expensive and fragmented DLC model. This is one of the biggest complaints about EU4. While the base game is generous, most of the essential mechanics—like improved peace deals, estates, mission trees, or trade policy control—are locked behind DLC. Paradox has released dozens of expansions, flavor packs, and immersion packs over the years. While some are great, it’s hard to know which ones are worth it, and the cost adds up quickly unless you wait for a bundle or subscribe to the DLC library. [*] Late-game fatigue. The first 100-200 years are the most exciting. But after 1700, wars get slower, AI gets passive, and systems like absolutism and revolutionary fervor start to bog things down. The AI rarely puts up a huge fight in the late game, and you might find yourself painting the map without much resistance. Tech stops feeling meaningful, and the sheer scale of managing dozens of provinces and vassals can wear you out. [*] Occasional RNG and AI quirks. Coalition wars can feel arbitrary. Sometimes the AI blobs in weird, unhistorical ways. Naval warfare is shallow. And the AI can get very stubborn with alliances and peace offers. EU4 tries to simulate a lot, and sometimes the randomness undercuts your strategy. You might get unlucky with heir deaths, stability hits, or rebellious provinces for reasons that feel frustrating rather than fair. [/list]

Best game ever made, EU5 better realize that and step it up. I like the fact that it is very involved and makes you think - is never the same scenario even if you play the same country again and again. I dislike nothing, other than the fact world conquest got way harder when they made the change that resulted in the AI building much larger forts, but then again that is more realistic. Luckily I already got the achievement, but one religion will likely never happen for me.

Fantastic game! Great way to immerse yourself if you're a history enjoyer like myself. Limitless replayability due to the amount of nations in the game (each with specific mechanics and playstyles), the differing outcome of each playthrough and the absolute abundance of glorious mods. Want to larp as a mighty military powerhouse with unstoppable armies of space marines? Check. Want to colonise the entire uncivilized world to increase the reaches of your prestigious domain? Check. Want to make many much monies as an economic hegemon? Check. Want to strike fear in the hearts of all unsuspecting peoples with hundreds of thousands of elite cavalry willing to die to expand your borders as a scourge of god horde? Check. Want to seduce all the royal ladies of your potential enemies by showcasing your massive chin thus spreading your dynasty through marriage mechanics and having world powers fall under your reign via personal unions? Check. WANT TO CONQUER THE ENTIRE WORLD? CHECK.

The game is simply fantastic and never gets boring. The possibilities are limitless on how you want to approach and build your empire. DLCs are expensive and are worth getting once on sale. That's the only issue with the game. They really do improve the game mechanics and make it way more interesting. You may also learn a lot of history from the 15th century and beyond. Well done Paradox.

This is a hard review to write. Look. I like the game. It's a fun game a lot of the time. It's a good game in most ways. But dear god does it have the most insane DLC overload of any game I've ever played. To get the "full" game -by which, to be clear, I do not mean all of the expansions, just all of the basic features that should be in the base game- you would need to spend somewhere between 100 and 150 USD at full price, maybe more now. That's not including the DLCs that are what I would say are reasonable expansions of the base content, just the ones that you need to have the full experience because they add or overhaul half-baked functions. It feels like they take out features from the game to sell as DLC, and that crosses a line for me. There's nothing wrong with having DLC that are meaningful expansions that add onto the game, but when you make them effectively required to be playing the full game, there's a problem. It's nearly as bad as if Minecraft had a DLC that added crafting tables or Dark Souls added one to let you roll. The game is designed around some of these DLCs and feels horribly unfinished if you don't have them. This is compounded by the fact that it feels that it is rebalanced repeatedly with this in mind, meaning that if you shell out a few hundred bucks on DLCs (hey look at all those DLCs I have, wonder how I know this) you'll end up with an unfinished game and few hundred bucks worth of DLCs. Yeah. Now, it's not that bad now, there's only 4 or 5 DLCs you REALLY need to have, but come on. That's just not okay. If you can overlook that, it is a remarkably good game, though there is one other fairly major issue I need address; the insane player-bias of the AI. At some point a few years back now, the developers made some changes to the AI that have resulted in an insane degree of player bias at times. I think this was done to make the game harder after people learned easy ways to cheese the AI and while it does sort of work, this really kills the immersive simulation aspect of it for me due to the level of meta-gaming the AI will now do. I've had situations where I'll start off as a one-province minor and will have multiple world powers unprovokedly threaten me, guarantee the independence of people around me, and just effectively rival me right off the bat, making it all but impossible for me to progress normally without turning to extremely sweaty strategy plays. This is fine if that's what you're going for, but for someone looking for a casual historical sim game, it's extremely disappointing and frankly stupid. This does occasionally result in hilarious rivalries and such, but it makes it hard to look at the game as anything other than a try-hard strategy game. Oh, and culture groups, which are the vaguely racist way of ensuring Europe pretty much always does well, at the expense of everywhere else being a bit less fun to play, but honestly they don't change too much, they're just a really bad idea implemented in a really bad way. It really makes me sad to give this a negative review, but I just can't recommend it because of the terrible "break it and sell the fix" practice that it seems Paradox was going for here. If you can overlook the atrocious DLC practices (and don't mind the wonky AI), I will say this game is excellent and is probably worth a go, though I'd certainly get it on a sale since the DLC are very much needed.

Man, I've played over a thousand hours of this game and I still have a great time and play it constantly. If you like history, maps, and UNLIMITED POWER, then I cannot recommend this game enough.

Almost 3k hours and I still love the game, not much more needs to be said. I hope that EU5 will live up to this master piece!

Perhaps the greatest strategy game of all-time, and certainly a contender for my favorite. Getting over the learning curve is one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had in a video game.

Best replayability for any game I have played - enough mechanics as well as mods to keep us happy

good game but shit mechanics i recommend to receive a refund

unfortunately I am unable to leave a positive review for this product as I found the controls too tiny and confusing. there were maybe 100 different tiny buttons on the screen , many of them showing some popup user interface with even more buttons. this is not for me.

I primarily only play strategy games and this is by far my favorite I have ever played. Very complex but so sweet

Unfortunately there is no "neutral" option, but I have to give the game a thumbs down. I have been playing EUIV off and on for years, since about 2015, and my last return to the game made me decide to leave a review. The game has undergone numerous changes and gotten bloated with DLC. The DLC has added only some positive features to the game frankly, and I have played with and without the more recent subscription option that has become far too expensive to justify. Substantively, the gameplay is just not very engaging in peacetime and has a superficial understanding of the early modern age that it is trying to represent. Things like estates should feature more prominently, as should the actual character of a particular ruler. The construction system in provinces feels a bit superficial. Victoria II struck a good balance by having both NPC generated factories and infrastructure and those you could build as the state depending on your economic system. Something similar could have been beneficial in EUIV, especially since they added estates (nobility, merchants, clergy). Why can't they contribute to building things in the provinces? Obviously, Victoria II represents a nineteenth century industrial economy, but the state did not drive everything in the early modern period. The main economic development you can undertake for income is primarily securing trade nodes, which makes sense, but this doesn't really have any active gameplay. That would be fine if there was simply more to do in the game overall, but there is not. Much of the game is just sitting and waiting for ducats and monarch points to accumulate until you can take action, which is why I tend to use EUIV to play while listening to podcasts or lectures in the background. But that does not make an engaging game overall and sometimes makes you feel like a spectator in your own game, just waiting to get admin/military/diplomatic points to upgrade your technology level or unlock a new idea group. This, combined with the sluggish pace of getting enough gold to construct buildings in provinces, reinforces the passive role of the player in the game. This lack of engaging game-play also extends to developing New World colonies, although I have not played a nation capable of colonization in several years and do not know if they have changed the mechanics through updates. When you do engage in warfare which is largely the main activity in the game, it does not do a very good job representing the period even at a grand strategic level. The war-score system does not lend itself to showing how the states of the period tended to go for specific cities or other fixed objectives that could decide a war, instead of a more nineteenth and twentieth century concept of occupying larger swathes of territory during a conflict. Capturing a fortified city and especially a capital should be enough in a lot of cases to decide a war. There is also really no concept (as far as I can tell) of supply chains. For example, an Ottoman army should not be able to fight deep into Persia without facing stiff penalties as was historically the case. There is also little nuance or depth to the battles, as in most cases the biggest army wins. In the core game, it is also not clear to me if states that relied primarily on mounted troops historically are represented as being combat effective, but perhaps that is addressed by a strategy or DLC I do not have. When playing i.e. the Safavids or Timurids there should really not be an "unsupported cavalry" penalty when you build cavalry units without infantry. My last point and probably main frustration is the AI clearly cheating or having some kind of advantage to build up massive amounts of money and armies that they then use to an unfair advantage. I don't mind a challenge, but the outcomes are simply implausibe. To return to the Ottomans, the computer is able to field 100k plus armies and send them into a distant area like inner Persia with few penalties. I know this is repeating my earlier point, but it could be applied to a number of other states in the game. There needs to be some concept of army supply and supply chains, which DID exist in the early modern world. The computer appears to be simply not bound to the same limitations as the player, and makes trying to historical role-play runs very frustrating such as forming the early Mughals. Another reviewer said that the game requires a lot of metagaming and min-maxing, which I tend to agree with. The problem is that this breaks any possible immersion I could gain from the game. I am not sure how this AI cheating could be fixed, if at all, but it is frustrating to deal with. Certain countries are just obviously over-powered when played by the computer, the Ottomans being the notable example. I could say more but this is what I have on my mind for now. As I stated at the outset, if there was a neutral option I would select it. EUIV is not the worst game in the world, but it suffers from a lack of actual gameplay in lieu of a shallow "map-painting" (I dislike this expression, but whatever) exercise that reflects the period its supposed to depict on a very superficial level. The DLC bloat almost goes without saying, and is a serious, serious issue with the game. Overall, EUIV is kind of in a "meh" state for me and I have no desire to subscribe or pay hundreds of dollars for DLC that should have been free updates to fix core features of the gameplay. Maybe some day a developer could make a more rich and historically flavorful early modern grand strategy, but the vast rift between the scholarship and popular knowledge/writing on the period contributes to some of the issues with EUIV. Given what I have seen of Victoria III, I am not exactly excited at the prospects for EUV.

Most historically accurate and in-depth strategy game available, until the release of EU5.

I retook the game last May after all eu5 hype, as it did not attract me in the past due to the demanding learning curve. I am having a blast right now. Only 120h playing (I have limited time) and another 40h-50h watching tutorials about different concepts and situations that I find myself into while playing, so I am still learning the mechanics, and making punishing mistakes (in ironmode). I can see myself playing this game until EU5 is released.

For a gamer like me? Best game period. Been playing this on and off for over a decade and i am still drawing tremendous value from EU4.

❤ Audience ❤ ☐ Beginner ☐ Casual Gamer ☑ Normal Gamer ☐ Expert ☼ Graphics ☼ ☐ Bad ☐ Alright ☐ Good ☑ Beautiful ☐ Fantastic ♬ Music ♬ ☐ Bad ☐ Alright ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful ☑ Fantastic ☠ Difficulty ☠ ☐ Easy ☐ Average ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☑ Hard ☐ Unfair § Bugs § ☐ Bugs destroy the game ☐ Lots of bugs ☐ Few Bugs ☑ You can use them for speedrun ☐ Nothing encountered ☯ Story ☯ ☑ There is none ☐ Bad ☐ Alright ☐ Good ☐ Fantastic ⚔ Gameplay ⚔ ☐ Frustrating ☐ Sleepy ☐ Boring ☑ Fun ☑ Challenging ۞ Game time / Length ۞ ☐ Really short (0 - 3 hours) ☐ Short (4 - 8 hours) ☐ Few hours (10 - 20 hours) [if you focus on the main story] ☐ Long (40-60 hours) [if you complete everything] ☐ Very Long (61-100 hours) ☑ Extremely Long (101+ hours) $ Price / Quality $ ☐ Full price ☑ Wait for Sale ☐ Don't buy ☐ Refund it if you can

I love getting grape by Austria and Italy when playing Ottomans, 10/10 game

I feel this is the best Grand Strategy game paradox has made and is on the market. I am was originally a total war player but honestly this game is far better than total war in the campaign department along with historical and in game flavor. The campaign is like no other I feel, every nation feels flavorful but you need dlc in order to unlock much of this flavor which kinda sucks. However every nation feels very different and but also has much repeatability. I wish a total war game could do an early modern historical game with such flavor but sadly this will never happen I am sad. However this game is quiet hard to learn, takes a few games to truly understand, I would estimate around 5-10 hours. BUT IT IS TOTALLY WORTH IT. I think this allows you to play every major nation in the game and have fun blowing up France every single run (my favorite part of the game). Just get this game, stack wipe everyone, gets loads of duckets and have fun GET THIS GAME

If you like history, like watching colours change, like ruining your chance for a date, or just have autism, its for you. I personally, check all boxes. Great game, very addicting and in depth. But one thing i would warn a newcomer about is the pre-1000 hour noob stage. I'm still in there myself, 150 hours as of writing this and never did anything of meaning, ever :D

More fun with friends, but either way the playtime is nearly infinite. More hours on this game than nearly any other.

If your new to EU like I am than start here. This is an older game so take it with a grain of salt. It looks more complicated than it is as making more money boils down to having more land or increasing development. Military is also pretty simple. The game does get a bit old after 30 hours as the systems are not too complex. Looking forward to EU5.

AI is horrible, Allies peace out when i reinforce with 100k and they run away instead of join a battle that they would be able to gurantee our victory in if they joined, Also why did they peace out when i had sucessfully sieged ottoman constantinople? Why does my vassal's capital give the ottomans more warscore than constantinople does to me? This isnt just stupid and annoying, It's insanely silly and somehow slightly funny with the constantinople things.

Been playing for a while, love playing as Austria just for all of the PU's. A really nice game where you can play for hours at a time. Can't wait for EU5

It made me undestand politics better with a diet. It was difficult to play but was possible to enjoy.

Such a big historical sandbox to play. Amazing mods like Anbennar for great fantasy. Map painting is fun.

EU4 is just classic in the grand strategy game genre and after 10 years of development there is really lot to explore.

There is too much DLC, but ultimately this is a very deep and fun game. You can follow so many paths and you have so many options for what to do. I'd say it's worth all the extra purchases.

Very good game, may be confusing at first but very good.

Like every other Paradox game, it's awesome at its core but the DLCs are only worth buying on sale AND if you intend to share them with friends in multiplayer.

Do not start playing this game unless you want to lose hundreds of hours off of your life.

I love this game but its an grind i spent 18 hours on this game as a very small state and had only one state now after 18 hours i have 3 states yipeeeeeee!

I mean its a fun game sure, but It just gets too frustrating sometimes, when everything starts going well, my economy is booming and I have a large army but then I get absolutely shit sweeped by lithuania due to my morale being low. Its a complex game and I understand that but its definetly too complex for me. Also the monitization is pretty bad. I buy a dlc and another dlc was required for one of the missions to work.

The game is easy to play if you do the tutorial, and if youre stilled confused, just watch some yt videos. if you learn how to play it, it is AMAZING!

If you are intrigued by the thought of having to look at numerous excel sheets and a single map for hours on end, buy this game. Do you have a life, a job, perhaps even children? Abort. Turn away. Run. I'm going to be honest, the learning curve is brutal. It took me about 300 hours of non-ironman playthroughs filled with save-scumming to learn and understand what I could get away with and what NOT to do. But once you get a sense of the games inner workings and get the confidence that you know what you're doing, booting up those ironman games and seeing the achievement pop up that you spent your entire day off trying to get, this game is CRACK. Watching the Ottoman armies disintegrate to ashes in your Caucasus mountain forts, while all of their provinces in the Balkans get absolutely annihilated or seeing a humongous Austria crumble as they have to fight you and your 3 Great Power allies just because they had to oblige to their silly Emperor duties and defend that worthless one province nation that you just attacked is a dopamine hit no other game can give you. For me, this is the best game Paradox has to offer. You can really do some ridiculous stuff in this game. Realism and historical accuracy are only a thing until you hit that "Start Game" button. Even the A.I. just straight up goes bonkers sometimes. Well, a lot of the time actually. You should NOT play this game without DLC, however those DLC as a result of years of content cost a fortune right now. I recommend finding a sugar mommy OR if you really want to torture yourself by trial of "learning to play EU4" you can pay 5 bucks to get a subscription to play it with every single DLC available and determine from there if this is the game for you.

This game is the biggest cause of western low birth rates.. Go outside fellas.. Touch grass.. Don't end up like me..

Perfect game for history immersion, but it is very time-consuming

This is a very good game, it works well with multiplayer, it is very entertaining as it covers several time periods so has a large appeal, would recommend playing as it lets you play as almost every country and lets you have a challenging but rewarding run through multiple time periods.

This game has stolen every thing I love and hold dear... would I do it again.....yeah probably

I've played Hearts of Iron and Stellaris and enjoyed them, however this game is just a muddled mess. There is not a good tutorial or play through the explain even the basics of the game. You can sense there is a deep, complex game in here somewhere, but gaining the knowledge to understand it appears not to be a priority for the developers of this game.

I've been watching youtube videos about this game to learn how to play it. Did the tutorial and completed it. Spent the next five hours of my weekend just to still figure out how to play this game. and somehow I still couldn't figure out how to actually play it properly. Either I bury Castille into a massive debt or be randomly be declared war by my neighbors for not having an heir as Muscovy. It really looks fun to watch youtubers dominate in this game but my experience as a new player is nothing but pain and 50% trying to figure out what's wrong with my country because it refuses to yield my desired outcome. It really would be nice if there could be more tutorials and like a wikipedia in game where you can ask anything that confuses you other than being forced to read long reddit threads for help.

hey bro, if you're reading this you're thinking about playing EU4, my favorite game ever. let me tell you what makes it my favorite, so maybe if you relate you can get it for yourself. first of all, this game is about freaking history. that means that instead of just RP'ing a civilization like you do in sid meier civilization, where the gameplay is nothing about the country you pick, you get to actually BE the country you're playing as. if you're france, you're france and you hate england just like they actually did and vice versa. second thing I like about this game is its depth. I'm not gonna say it's deceptive in how its presented, because the game has a famously steep learning curve. me personally, I used to play a lot of SC2, then Civ 5, then LoL, so this game felt like a good fit with its RTS mechanics and resource systems. if you're brand new to the genre you might not be familiar with the controls, but the ability to choose a historical start means it's always possible to operate a large nation so that unfamiliarity isn't as punishing. There is technically a difficulty setting, but most players would tell you that being one nation or another is the true difficulty selection. Last thing I like about this game is the multiplayer. if you're somebody who liked playing board games then this game's multiplayer is a perfect fit. the way that RP'ing is incentivized in this game is that you are in fact the historical nation as mentioned before. I guess that summarizes my reasoning: the premise of the game itself. Being able to play as a nation in the world's history allows a person to become more familiar with how the world got to where it is today. It involves all the tropes and themes of history that feels like a real representation of how the historical actors themselves felt. anyway, dude, that's my review of EU4. if any of that sounds cool to you, maybe hit me up for multiplayer haha

This game needs to be better like Hearts of Iron. I recommend but only if you aren't used to the controls on Hearts of Iron. Paradox please make the systems the same.

Very difficult to learn this game, and the tutorial doesn't cover enough. I've played other strategy games, and this game has a very steep learning curve and not enough fun for it to worth spending that much time learning. Before it could be made playable.

compared to other big paradox games eu4 is I think the worst of the big 5 (ignoring vicky 3) Every time I play it I just feel like ck2 or vicky 2 would be a better use of my time

10 hours in and I still can't survive a war, but I can kinda understand economy

Hard to understand when beginning but very fun when improving

do not play this if you value your free time. otherwise, inshallah my brothers, deus vult, etc.

This is the grand strategy game for people who think Risk is too simple and Civilization is too casual. You control a country from 1444 to 1821, dealing with war, diplomacy, trade, colonization, and religion, all while the world burns around you. Every single country in the world is playable, from mighty France to one-province Ryukyu, and each has its own challenges. The gameplay depth is insane there’s always something new to learn even after hundreds of hours. The community is strong, and the modding scene is legendary (Extended Timeline, MEIOU & Taxes, and more). But be warned: The learning curve is brutal expect to drown in menus, numbers, and acronyms (AE, MP, CB, PU, etc.). The DLC model is expensive; the full experience costs a lot unless you wait for sales. Late game micromanagement can feel like a second job. And yes, the AI sometimes loses its mind and declares suicidal wars. But despite its flaws, there’s nothing else like it. No other game lets you rewrite history so dynamically, whether you’re forming the Holy Roman Empire as Bohemia or turning Mali into a colonial empire. TL;DR: Complex, addicting, sometimes infuriating. You'll sink hundreds of hours into it, lose sleep, and still come back for "just one more run." Buy it on sale, grab a few DLCs later, and prepare to lose your free time for the next decade.

10/10 would betray my allies again for 3 provinces and a coastal center of trade I still don’t know how to use.